Apologies to the two or three of you out there following the blog. May was a little hectic. I should be back shortly with a few catch-up posts as well as replays of a Great War Spearhead into scenario and two replays of the 1871 battle of Wissembourg scenario. Plus, maybe, more Et Sans Resultat upcoming!
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| French Light Infantry Attacking Through Woods by Victor Huen |
The battlefield included some basic terrain, but nothing to provide too great an advantage to either side. A stream or creek wound among some low hills close to the Allied side of the table (which we called the west side). Patches of woods, a few more low hills, and some grain fields were scattered over the center of the battlefield. A road ran from the west, Allied, edge of the board to the east, or French, side, roughly perpendicular to the two sides' deployment areas, with another joining it at right angles running towards the north side of the battlefield.
The mission was a fairly straightforward "defeat the enemy" one; the intent was just to give one player an introduction to the game and the others a brush-up/reminder of the rules.
The Allies deployed with their cavalry on their right and their infantry occupying their left and center, with the right hugging the table edge and their left fairly open. The French mirrored their deployment, infantry facing infantry and cavalry facing cavalry.
The Allies advanced their cavalry slightly then formed a holding position, waiting to see what the enemy did. In the meantime, they moved their infantry forward slowly, throwing out some light troops to extend their left flank.
The French moved forward fairly aggressively in the center while refusing their right with a battalion of légère, which sheltered from view inside a wheat field. One battery of French artillery seized a small hill in their center while another moved up the east-west road toward the junction.
The leftmost Prussian infantry regiment crossed the stream and paused, waiting to see where the bulk of the French infantry would go; meanwhile the rightmost Prussian infantry regiment held position on the near side of the stream. The French moved their right-hand brigade to meet the Prussian advance and a battle developed between the stream and the wheatfield. The Prussian riflemen on their far left moved in to support the attack but were driven back by the French légère, who advanced to the edge of the wheatfield and began volleying.
The French cavalry had moved to claim much of the ground between them and the Allied horse, using fields and low hills to screen their advance from the Allies' horse artillery, which had unlimbered on the edge of a wheatfield beside the east-west road. The French horse artillery, however, had found a good position to bombard the Allied horse from and began firing away.
An attack on the French infantry's right-hand brigade by Prussian musketeers in column of divisions was defeated, giving the French the confidence to push forward their left-hand infantry brigade along the east-west road towards the center of the Allied line.
At this point, two squadrons of French cavalry crested the hill they were sheltering behind and launched an attack on the Allied cavalry's right flank. One squadron of Russian uhlans came out to meet them while a squadron of Russian hussars, taken on the wrong foot, failed to act and received the charge at the halt. The uhlans defeated their opponents and threw them back. The other French lancers won their action against the hussars, but took such a beating in doing so that they also fell back.
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| Prussian Schuetzen by Richard Knoetel |
In the center, with the Prussian cavalry retiring, the French infantry pushed forward, infantry in lines preceded by battalions of légère in extended order. In the center of the infantry battle, French and Prussians were still engaged, but the leftmost Prussian regiment had taken enough pounding in its attacks that it had also fallen back, leaving its comrades with both flanks exposed. At this point, the Allies decided to withdraw from the field before they were forced to flee.
We were hoping for several more players than we got in the end. We had three active players, an umpire, and two umpire's assistants (to move troops and measure distances, since we were playing by Zoom). For reasons I don't recall (possibly just army preference), we put the two experienced players on the same side (French) and gave the novice the Allied command. In retrospect, obviously, we should have put one experienced player on each side and drafted the two umpire's assistants as players (one was a novice C&G player, one experienced); that way we could have had an experienced player and a novice on each side, with a spare experienced player.
We used a moderate-sized table (4' x 6') for a divisional action, but we should perhaps have started both armies a little closer together to give them room to fall back. While it would have taken away a bit of maneuver option, it would have given them a little more "backfield", so defeated troops didn't run off the edge of the table so fast. Alternately, we could have fought the action on a narrower front and used the short edges for deployment and the long edges for engagement. It can be challenging, even using the 1" = 50 paces scale, to fit a combined-arms C&G game on the average gaming table. With deployed cavalry moving 15" to 18" per turn and maneuvering cavalry moving twice that, opposing cavalry units can move onto the table from offboard and be within charge reach of each other at the end of the first turn, even when operating in line.
C&G, like any game, is a product of its designer's theory of how combat works. Unlike any other tabletop miniatures game, however, that theory can only be learned by playing the game. The designer's notes explain some elements of morale and fatigue, but it's only by playing (or hanging out in online discussion groups for the game) that one learns crucial elements of play. Artillery should initially take ranging shots with very low percentages of its total strength before engaging with the whole battery. Infantry should not advance more than 75 paces in a turn in which it plans to issue fire. If you wish to charge with a unit in Turn 2, be sure to advance towards the enemy in Turn 1, as the momentum of having done so will make a successful charge attempt more likely.
And those are elements that one might intuit from a very close reading of the screenshots included in the manual. Other things that are laid out nowhere are the way that all the factors of an instance of firing affect its effectiveness or how the system determines what morale result will come from a combination of terrain, fatigue, firing, and combat factors. One can expect that fire from close range will be more effective than at maximum range, or that artillery that has not fired will be more effective than artillery that has been firing for several turns, using up its ammunition and fatiguing its gunners. And it's certainly more realistic that players not have formulae to make those computations exactly, as in a boardgame one can count up combat factors and compute the perfect attack given a combat results table. But one feels that going to the opposite extreme is just as unrealistic.
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| The Capture Of The Prussian Fortress of Kolberg On 16 December 1761 by Alexander Kotzebue |
In commenting on the last post about our KF 1757 campaign, Keith from The Wargames Room asked:
"I have myself wondered about running this campaign, or something similar. Do you think any aspects worked particular well? With hindsight would there be things you would change?"
Overall, I'd say that Kleiner Feldzug (KFZ) is fun and a good simple tool for playing a campaign. Just be aware of its limitations.
Of course, it has the same limitations of most campaign games that one uses to generate miniature battles. Most especially, players may maneuver effectively and generate the sort of battles that real generals long for but wargamers seldom like--ones where one side has a definite advantage, anywhere from the "slight edge" to the "completely insuperable". Some battles that the defender intended from the start to be an "economy of force" engagement can be dealt with by the "Resolving Small Battles" rule, but one may end up with an engagement where the attacker outnumbers the defender by 2:1 or where the defender establishes the sort of position that will cost the attacker half his army to break. Campaigns don't usually produce the "each side gets an equal force" games.
KFZ is a very simple game, and some of the players wanted much more detail than it's designed to supply. For example, the raid and recon process is VERY abstract; light and irregular troops go out, do stuff, and you just get the end result in terms of information and/or SPs lost. Players often wanted to know how they could better guard against these events, and the short answer in game mechanics terms is, "you can't". Likewise, some players wanted to take these "small wars" troops and do other things with them, bring them to the battlefield, sabotage bridges, hold mountain passes. My bland answer was that they were able to do the abstract business of raids and recon and that was it, but if you want to create a whole additional game model that enumerates these forces and gives army commanders the ability to assign them more specific missions or detach them to work with specific force commanders, one has that option. The only limit is one's imagination.
Another arm that doesn't make a real appearance in KFZ are the engineers and sappers. Players wanted to specify that forces staying in one place would take the time to dig in (something that many SYW armies would do given even the least opportunity). One can certainly allow that, but one has to work out what that will cost players and what benefit they get from it.
Another issue I had to deal with in adapting the game as written is that it's designed for sequential moves. Prussia moves, then Austria, and so on. So each side has to wait for the other side to decide on its move and submit it, and for the umpire to resolve it and post the results.
Not only that, but KFZ is built for one-on-one play; turn one player into one player per army, and now each player is waiting on the next (or you have to wait until one team can all agree on their joint move). That means loooong delays either way.
I know from experience that it's hard to hold email campaigns together, and if players have to wait for each other to get around to thinking about the game, make decisions, and write them up, the game will start haemorrhaging players rapidly as people get bored and drop out or take even longer to get their head back into the latest turn.
So I had to tweak the structure of the game to allow all players' moves to be resolved simultaneously. This wasn't too much of a challenge until the armies started sending off small cavalry forces that moved swiftly and made me resort to very careful sequencing and to make some additional calls on how the supply rules would work.
Likewise, one has to make some decisions about how to implement information gathering and dissemination. In the original game, with only two players, each knows where all the opponent's troops are at start and knows where all the enemy's armies are (if not their composition) at the end of each move. I decided to leave that more or less intact, but one could take the opportunity to introduce a bit more fog of war and restrict players' knowledge of the location and strength of friendly and enemy forces absent proximity or information sharing. The latter should be exceptionally difficult for Prussians within Austria, as Austrian irregular forces created almost impenetrable barriers around Prussian armies. To reflect this in our game, I gave the Austrians a second raid/recon option for any Prussian forces inside Austria, but I had to cut this back to an extra recon only--giving the Austrians two raid options was far too powerful.
The raid option uses the attrition mechanism, and this we found far too devastating. Yes, armies should be discouraged from force-marching, but the Prussians *have* to move through mountains if they're going to move into Bohemia somewhere other than Pirna and Zittau, and the cost (50% chance of losing a SP for every unit and a 16% chance of losing two) proved to be far too devastating. I gave those subjected to attrition a 50% saving throw for each SP indicated to be lost, and that gave result that still curbed over-ambitious marching while not being unreasonably crippling.
Speaking of crippling, probably the most contentious event in the campaign was the surrender of Prague and the loss of von Browne's army. I made it very clear to the Austrian commander what *might* happen, but he convinced himself it couldn't really take place. Then the D6 came up 1, and the fortress surrendered. I wasn't prepared to give the Austrians a do-over just because they had ignored a very clear warning, especially because they could have fought the besieging Prussian army in the field but didn't want to take the losses that the very canny Prussian commander was clearly going to inflict on them by clever management of terrain and deployment. But it's something to consider: what event is going to be too bitter a pill for players to swallow, even if warned of it ahead of time, and how should one deal with it? Just take that opportunity for disaster away from them? or make them face up to the possible risk as well as the perceived reward?
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| Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher in Bautzen, 1813 by Bogdan Willewalde |
The letter ratings you'll see work just like classroom scores: an A+ is the best and a D- is the worst (it actually goes below D but, like all high school students, we'll hope you don't see any scores like that!)Distances are all measured in paces; for our 15mm battle, we'll be treating each inch as 50 paces.
Division Grise - Attack
[ 101] General de Division Grise - Active D+ [650 paces]
[ 111] 1/3rd Artillerie 0/ 200 [ 8] C+ 6pdr [Medium] [400 750]
[ 112] 2/3rd Artillerie 0/ 200 [ 8] C+ 6pdr [Medium] [400 750]
Brigade Jaune - Attack
[ 102] General de Brigade Jaune - Active C- [300 paces]
[ 101] 1/6th Legere 0/ 600 B- Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 102] 2/6th Legere 0/ 450 B- Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
Regiment Argent - Attack
[ 105] Colonel Argent - Active B+ [250 paces]
[ 103] 1/37th Ligne 0/ 750 C Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 104] 2/37th Ligne 0/ 600 C Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 105] 3/37th Ligne 0/ 600 C Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
Brigade Vert - Attack
[ 103] General de Brigade Vert - Active B- [500 paces]
[ 106] 1/14th Legere 0/ 450 C+ Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 107] 2/14th Legere 0/ 450 C Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
Regiment Lilas - Attack
[ 106] Colonel Lilas - Active C+ [175 paces]
[ 108] 1/49th Ligne 0/ 750 C- Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 109] 2/49th Ligne 0/ 750 C- Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 110] 3/49th Ligne 0/ 600 C- Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
Brigade Cramoisi - Attack
[ 104] General de Brigade Cramoisi - Active B+ [500 paces]
[ 113] 1/1st Artillerie de Cheval 0/ 150 [ 6] C+ 6pdr [Light] [400 550]
Regiment Blanc - Attack
[ 107] Colonel Blanc - Active C [175 paces]
[ 114] 8th Chasseur a Cheval 0/ 300 C- Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 115] 12th Chasseur a Cheval 0/ 240 C- Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 116] 21st Chasseur a Cheval 0/ 240 C- Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
Regiment Noir - Attack
[ 108] Colonel Noir - Active C [225 paces]
[ 117] 2nd Chevau Leger 0/ 240 C- Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 118] 4th Chevau Leger 0/ 240 C- Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 119] 6th Chevau Leger 0/ 240 C- Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
Strengths:
losses/active
0/ 6000 Bayonets
0/ 1500 Sabres
0/ 550 Artillerists
0/ 22 Cannon
0/ 8050 Total of all arms
9 Colors presentDivision von Gruen - Attack
[ 501] Generalleutnant von Gruen - Active C- [650 paces]
Brigade Blau - Attack
[ 502] Oberst Blau - Active C- [300 paces]
[ 501] 1st Silesian Grenadiers 0/ 600 B sk- SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 505] #2 Foot Artillery 0/ 200 [ 8] C 6pdr [Medium] [400 750]
Regiment Vier - Attack
[ 504] Major Vier - Active C+ [225 paces]
[ 502] 1/1st Silesian Infantry 0/ 600 C sk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 503] 2/1st Silesian Infantry 0/ 600 C sk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 504] Fus/1st Silesian Infantry 0/ 600 C+ Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
Brigade Gelb - Attack
[ 503] Oberst Gelb - Active C [350 paces]
[ 506] 1st West Prussian Schuetzen 0/ 600 C Esk+ Rifled Musket [125 300]
[ 510] 1/1st West Prussian Reserve 0/ 600 C- sk- SB.Musk.[2nd] [ 75 200]
[ 511] 2/1st West Prussian Reserve 0/ 600 C- sk- SB.Musk.[2nd] [ 75 200]
[ 512] #4 Foot Artillery 0/ 200 [ 8] C 6pdr [Medium] [400 750]
Regiment Sieven - Attack
[ 505] Major Sieven - Active C [175 paces]
[ 507] 1/1st West Prussian Infantry 0/ 600 C sk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 508] 2/1st West Prussian Infantry 0/ 600 C sk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
[ 509] Fus/1st West Prussian Infantry 0/ 600 C+ Esk+ SB.Musk.[1st] [ 75 200]
Brigade Krasny - Attack
[ 506] Generalmajor Krasny - Active C+ [450 paces]
[ 513] #6 Horse Artillery 0/ 200 [ 8] C 6pdr [Light] [400 550]
Brigade Grau - Attack
[ 507] Oberst Grau - Active B [500 paces]
[ 514] 1&2/1st Silesian Hussars 0/ 240 C+ Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 515] 1&2/2nd Pomeranian Hussars 0/ 240 C+ Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 516] 1&2/2nd Silesian Uhlans 0/ 240 C- Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
Brigade Chernit - Attack
[ 508] Colonel Chernit - Active C [300 paces]
[ 517] 1/Tatar Uhlans 0/ 240 C Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 518] 1/Grondo Hussars 0/ 240 C Esk+ SB.Carbine [ 50 100]
[ 519] Pskov Dragoons 0/ 240 D+ SB.Musketoon [ 75 200]
Strengths:
losses/active
0/ 6000 Bayonets
0/ 1440 Sabres
0/ 600 Artillerists
0/ 24 Cannon
0/ 8040 Total of all arms Continuing our introduction to Carnage & Glory...
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| Prince Bagration at the Battle of Borodino by A.Y. Averyanov |
Infantry, like cavalry, have a type (heavy or light), a strength, a number of subunits (in this case companies--all infantry units are battalions), weapon type (some type of smoothbore or rifled musket; very backward troops may also have some proportion of pikes or even simply hand weapons), and may have one or more colors. Infantry units may also be assigned battalion guns--small, light cannon that are dragged by hand with the infantry as it advances or retires.
Infantry, like cavalry, are also rated for combat, fire, class, and experience. And, also like cavalry, infantry may be trained to fight in extended order (a large part of the unit dispersed in a loose firing line with the remaining portion in close order behind them) and/or capable of skirmishing defensively (small numbers of skirmishers protecting the unit from other skirmishers) or offensively (larger numbers acting both defensively and aggressively to disrupt opposing units with fire).
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| French Imperial Guard Artillery artist unknown |
Artillery units represent batteries (their subunits are sections), which were generally company-sized units. They are either horse artillery (in which not only the caissons and limbers have horse teams, but all the gunners have riding horses as well) or foot artillery (in which most of the the gunners must trudge along on foot). Artillery are also rated as having military or civilian trains. Most armies had stopped using civilians to manage the teams that pulled their artillery limbers and ammunition caissons, as they would often leave untimely, taking the horses with them and leaving the gunner high and dry. Some armies, however, could not afford to replace the cheaper civilian teamsters with expensive military units and had to take the chance that their guns might suddenly find themselves stranded.
Artillery unit strength is computed by multiplying the number of artillery pieces in the unit by 25. They can be assigned a variety of different types of cannon or howitzers as the primary battery pieces (even rockets are available!), and a battery assigned cannon can also be allotted a number of howitzers. These latter are deducted from the total number of guns input from the battery and assigned an appropriate type based on the main battery strength; so, for instance, a six-gun battery composed of light six-pounder cannon that is allotted two howitzers will end up with four light six-pounders and two light howitzers. Many nations assigned howitzers in this way to supplement a battery's cannon, while some formed batteries entirely of howitzers. Like cavalry and infantry, artillery are rated for combat, fire, class, and experience.
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| Closing the Gates of Hougomont by Robert Gibbs |
In Carnage & Glory terrain affects line of sight and movement. Line of sight is important both for fire and because units can only charge units they can see at the beginning of a turn. You, the player, may know that there's a line of enemy infantry on the other side of that ridge, but until your cavalry crest the ridge, they can't declare a charge on the blighters.
For movement purposes, terrain either doesn't materially affect movement (unobstructed open ground that's either flat or very gently rolling) or slows movement and disrupts formations. The latter types of terrain are further divided into either linear obstacles (hedges, walls, streams, creeks) or disruptive terrain (area terrain such as swamps, brush, woods, or much more significant linear barriers, like entrenchments, fordable rivers, or ravines). Included among disruptive terrain are BUAs (built-up areas--villages and towns) and strongpoints, one of the most famous of which is the Belgian ferme-chateau of Hougomont, shown above. Linear obstacles include deployed artillery batteries (a relatively narrow band of obstacles that need to be passed), while disruptive terrain includes limbered artillery (a much broader area that has to be navigated). Linear obstacles can be affected by engineering work during a game; for example, pioneers might be detailed to break a hole in a stone wall for artillery to pass through.
In our introductory scenario, I want to keep complexities to a minimum, so I'm inclined to keep the terrain pretty simple--nothing as complex as buildings or fortifications, maybe some woods, a stream, and some gentle hills.
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| The Battle of Leipzig by Vladimir Moshkov |
OK, having hit the high points of the rules, the next thing we need is a scenario to try them out. I have all the different modules, but I also know that the player who suggested the game, Scott "La Salle" B. is goofy about the French First Empire, so a Napoleonic scenario seemed warranted. I looked through the figures I had ready to hand, and a late-war (1813+) battle between French and Prussians seemed to be suitable.
A historical battle or a hypothetical or imaginary one? A historical scenario, using a historical order of battle (OB) has the appeal of seeming more "real" and allowing players to match their wits against those of their historical counterparts. But history also has all kinds of funny angles, rough edges, and pointy bits that interfere with smoothness and simplicity. So for this test case, I'm going to make up a small engagement that might have been fought, drawing on historical OBs for inspiration, but also smoothed and simplified to make things easier and less distracting. Since in 1813 it was surely fought in Germany somewhere, I'll call it Die Schlacht bei Verbreitnet. I had a clever idea of naming it after the German word for example or test case, or sample, but I seem to have goofed somewhere, as this seems to mean "spreads", but I'm stuck with it now, so let's move on.
What size of battle? Something the battle of Leipzig (pictured above) is probably beyond the scope of C&G even with a whole club's resources. But since at least one of our players will be a C&G novice, the size of the battle should be constrained. I want to keep the number of troop units per player manageable, since a beginning player will be new to thinking out what all the options are for using their troops.
Another reason to keep the OB on the smaller side is the table I can easily set up for video gaming, a tabletop measuring 4' x 6'. Even when using 15mm figures and C&G's 1 inch = 50 paces, a table that size should not be overloaded with troops. So I thought maybe a division of infantry and a brigade of cavalry on each side.
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| Napoleon Conferring With Desaix at Marengo by Keith Rocco |
Command in C&G is mostly about being able to rally and encourage troops. Orders exist and do constrain action, but they're limited part of the game. Also, officers are "used" on a unit-by-unit basis; if an officer succeeds in supporting a unit (encouraging it in combat, rallying it afterwards), he's usually done for that turn. So even having good officers, a force can be handicapped if they don't have enough officers. So the number of officers has to scale to the number of units. If one side has a division of two brigades, getting a divisional commander and two brigadiers is going to be almost useless if each of the brigades has 4-6 units; three officers for ten or more units is too few.
Officers have to be rated for command level, leadership ability, and tactical ability. Command level determines what the range of their effectiveness will be once battle begins--the more senior the command, the larger his zone of influence. Leadership ability determines how well the officer issues and receives orders, but more importantly how they help units deal with adversity--it helps keep units in line when the enemy attack and it helps rally them to the standard when morale is faltering. And leadership contributes to the army's initiative. Tactical ability also contributes to initiative; it also guides the leader's eye when planning an attack and helps when units are seeking to charge.
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| 1807, Friedland by Ernest Meissonier |
How to represent cavalry units on the tabletop? Each regiment was composed of a number of squadrons, each squadron of a number of companies or troops, and each troop had a certain number of officers, NCOs, and common soldiers. When creating an OB, what should our tabletop units represent--regiments, squadrons, or troops? The designer has remarked that he tends to vary cavalry representation by how much flexibility he wants to give a commander. Very flexible? Each unit is a squadron. Less flexible? Each unit represents several squadrons. Least flexible? Each unit is a regiment. Of course, this varies too by the size of the unit; a 200-man 1814 cavalry regiment is like a large squadron, while a full-strength Russian light cavalry unit of 1,000+ men would be impossibly huge to represent as a single unit. One also has to think again about manageability; if one side has a division of infantry, that may be eight or more infantry battalions (single units in C&G). But a division of cavalry represented as individual squadrons might be sixteen or more squadrons. If each of those is a unit the player has to maneuver, fight, and rally, the player will run out of focus (and officers) far too quickly. For larger battles with more units, it's best to make cavalry units represent larger formations--groups of squadrons or (especially if the regiments are low in manpower) entire regiments.
In addition to how to represent cavalry units, each unit has its characteristics, like those of leaders, that have to be determined. Most important is its type (heavy, light, lancer) and its strength in numbers. Other factors include how many subunits it consists of (which will determine how nimble it is in executing evolutions), what sort of firearm it carries (if any: almost all cavalry carried some sort of musketoon or carbine for skirmishing and dismounted use, though many never used them in full-scale battles), and whether it carries colors (very important in the morale result of combats, if unit should lose a color or capture one of the enemy's), and who it reports to (what its chain of command is). Is the unit trained in skirmishing? And most important of all are its ratings for shooting and for combat (excellent, good, average, poor, contemptible), its class (guard, elite, line, militia, irregular), and experience (crack, veteran, trained, conscript). All units are rated on these characteristics, and the interaction of these (which do not change in the course of a battle) with a unit's actions and those of its opponents help to determine its fatigue and morale state (which generally start a battle at a high state, unless otherwise dictated by a campaign or historic battle circumstance).
With the 1757 kleiner Feldzug over, my next project is introducing a friend to Nigel Marsh's excellent computer-moderated Carnage and Glory II miniature wargaming rules. One of the other players in the KF1757 campaign suggested it, and I gladly agreed, as I'm fond of the game. In fact, from trawling through my email archive, I'd guess that I've been playing these rules on and off for about ten years. Readers who have been with this blog for a while will recall my mentioning it a few times before, in the context of playing battles of the American Revolution and, before that, of the British Civil War.
The C&G rules cover a goodly portion of European and American military history of the gunpowder era from 1600 to 1871, with modules for pike and shot, the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century, the era of Frederick, the Napoleonic era, and the early industrial era (the American Civil War and those of mid- to late-nineteenth century Europe). In my opinion, the rules fit well into the tactical arena; a beginners' game might feature a brigade or two on each side, but with sufficient space and players, one can play corps-sized actions with them. Playing a full-scale battle of the 18th or 19th century, with multiple corps on each side, is a significant challenge, I believe, given that all the communication and resolution of action has to be routed through a single instance of the program. It might be possible to find some way for several users to tag-team on a single platform, or to break a single large battlefield into separate sections run simultaneously. But the system's command and control system is somewhat basic; a grand battle like Austerlitz or Solferino would probably be suited for playing with a system that's more specifically focused on command and control and that handles units at a slightly higher scale.
The game is played jointly on the tabletop--with miniatures (or with counters)--and on the computer. Most often, one player acts as umpire, collating input from players and feeding it to the program, then taking the "replies" from the program and passing them back to the players. An example of this sort of exchange might see a player call out, "The Foot Guards battalion, number 101, fires a full volley, 100 percent, at the Regiment Auvergne, number 503, at 50 paces," with the umpire replying, "The French are staggered, taking 20 casualties!"
The program keeps track of a variety of data about the units and leaders in combat, including order and disorder, unit formation, morale, casualties, fatigue, and ammunition. This allows the system to deal with more complex interactions than players would be able to handle without a great many markers and a good deal of rules fatigue. While players can always petition the umpire for detailed information about their units (petitions the umpire is free to grant or refuse), the most that players generally know about their troops is their facing and formation, a general indicator of their morale (good, hesitant, failing, routing), and the feedback they get when they attempt some fatiguing action (changing formation, moving through difficult terrain, firing, or charging or defending against a charge).
One aspect that is not always greeted with joy is that the program handles all the randomization as well. Many wargamers, especially miniature gamers, are used to rolling their own dice; a good deal of the story-telling that surrounds this sort of gaming concerns players' luck--good or bad--with dice, and rolling dice gives players an (illusory) sense of control over the fate of their miniature battalions.
The downside of the system holding all the information and only releasing bits of it at a time is that it can be something of a black box. Not only do players not have complete information about the units under their command at any given time, they don't have complete information about how the system works.
In most wargames, players can estimate the effect of actions by using the data that they have about their units and the charts and tables the game includes to derive, if not certainties, at least estimates about likely outcomes. If units with a given strength attack an enemy of a known strength under certain conditions, they will not know the outcome for certain, but they know the range of likely outcomes and the percentages associated with them. For example, an attack of 3:1 odds will produce a complete defeat of the enemy 1/6 of the time, a repulse of the enemy 2/3 of the time, and a repulse of the attackers 1/6 of the time, with established modifiers should the enemy be holding especially defensible ground, the weather be bad (rain or snow), or leaders on one or both sides be especially likely to affect the outcome.
In Carnage & Glory, none of these sorts of computations can be made. Not only do players not know with any degree of certainty many of the factors that influence the strength of their own forces, they know even less about the enemy. And most importantly, they know nothing about the calculations that in another game would be represented by the combat results table. Instead, players must attempt to make assessments of likely outcomes based on their knowledge of the tactics of the period as understood by modern military history. And, of course, they have to rely on that knowledge and understanding being common between them and the game designer. Lacking that knowledge, they have to rely on the experience of other players familiar with the system, on insights provided by the designer in his notes on the rules, and/or on trial and error.
Fortunately, the designer provides a good deal of helpful advice in his manuals. He provides clear descriptions of what the basic unit status (what the player sees on the table) means, results like Unsteady, Disordered, or Shaken. He explains what the compulsory movement markers that units may get mean (No Advance, Halt, Retire/Retreat, and Rout), and he explains what morale (of both units and armies) and fatigue represent, how they can be lost, and how they can (sometimes) be restored.
Without going into too much detail, one can summarize threats to morale and causes of fatigue rather simply: don't try to do too much.
Of course, army and unit morale at the start of a battle will be based on the experience and training of the units in question. They'll be reduced as troops become fatigued and as units take casualties. They can be recovered (at least to some degree) by the active intervention of officers. And not just any officers; units respond best to officers from their chain of command. Any unit will be glad of attention from the army commander (assuming he isn't a buffoon), but the infantrymen won't be very impressed by the dashing hussar officer sent over from a nearby cavalry brigade, any more than the hussars would have much faith in the plodding infantry brigadier waving his little spadroon.
Fatigue itself will accumulate as units do "work": move at faster than regular speeds--either running or running away--change unit formation, move through difficult terrain, or engage in physical labor like building bridges or clearing obstructions. Units also accumulate fatigue in combat: by firing ranged weapons and by engaging in close combat. Fatigue can be erased by standing down and moving out of the combat zone, but it is removed much more slowly than it is accumulated. Thus a unit that had marched several turns at the double-quick and changed from road column to field column and from field column to line, then marched up a steep hill or through a swampy field, might well be exhausted before it's fired a shot. Likewise, a battery that finds a prominent position and begins firing all its guns continuously at an enemy as soon at they are sighted may well be wholly fatigued with its caissons empty by the time the enemy has arrived at close range and is preparing to charge.
The sequence of play in the game is fairly straightforward. There are some details, but essentially consists of
At the start of each turn, the system gives the umpire some news as to environmental factors (has it started to snow? is there fog covering the battlefield?), the state of each army's morale, and the arrival of any troops not currently on the battlefield. Which side will have the initiative in the turn ahead is also indicated; that side may decide whether it wishes to move first or second in the coming turn. Players may then issue general orders (orders restrict units' actions somewhat but are not a very big part of the game) and have units begin any engineering work they have in mind (warning: this will be fatiguing and slow--best to do your bridge-building or fortification before the battle begins).
Then comes movement. First, players secretly note and simultaneously announce their intentions to attempt charges with units. These attempts are resolved, placing units that succeed in charging close to their targets. Then the rest of movement takes place, in the order previously determined. Simple movement at a unit's normal movement rate is accomplished without informing the game system, but anything that would involve fatigue (wheeling, changing formation, moving through difficult terrain) is relayed to the umpire so that the system can assess fatigue (and, in some cases, indicate the maximum distance to be moved).
Once movement is completed, all units wishing to fire resolve that action, with the fire of units that are being charged first being resolved first. That activity also serves as a time to test the morale of these targets of charge, to see if they will stand and fight. After those fires are resolved, those of all other units are resolved and the effects assessed (changes in morale/order marked).
After fire combat comes the melee! The results of charges are determined. In most cases, one side's troops or the other's will fall back; in a few rare instances, troops may remain locked in combat until the next turn. If a defender is badly/quickly defeated, attackers may surge past their broken foe and hit another enemy in the same combat phase.
After melee is concluded, available officers are assigned to rally faltering troops. Depending on their rank and ability, officers have a certain zone of influence and may be assigned to any units needing inspiration that are within that radius of them during the rally phase. The system determines the success or failure of officers in rallying troops and may insist that officer remain with the unit in the following turn, or indicate that one officer's influence was not enough to achieve the desired result and allow another to be assigned, if available.
Here is where the number of officers assigned to an army in its order of battle becomes critical. Officers represent a morale resource for an army, so assigning them in the order of battle is less simply a reflection of the historical rank structure and more an indication of an army's ability to withstand adversity. Both the Blue and Red armies would have regimental commanders, adjutants, brigadiers, and aides de camp (ADCs), but if Blue's command and morale resources were low, a brigade OB might include only the brigadier and its regimental commanders, while a Red formation rich in effective command might be assigned a brigadier with an ADC and all its regimental commanders and their adjutants.
After rally actions have been adjudicated, the system performs morale checks and informs the umpire what units' state is at the end of the turn and which are engaging in compulsory movement (retreating, routing, or pursuing routing enemies).
That's it for my basic summary of the game system. The next post will introduce our test bed for next weekend's game, the Napoleoninc battle of Verbreitnet.